Robert E. Irion, Sandy, Utah: an interview by Benjamin Bahlmann, September 20, 2002: Saving the legacy tape no. 537, 538, and 539

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Robert E. Irion eptember 20'h, 2002 And I'm telling him, "Stay with me Bert. We're going to get them! Were going to get them!" And I"m thinking, "This guy is panicking." My thought in my mind is, "This guy is totally panicked- and why?" And he's seeing that we've got real trouble behind us - and I'm not aware of it until all of a sudden I hear this "POW! POW!" And I"m thinking, "Oh, what a hell of a time for this engine to cut out! When we're just about to catch up with these guys ... " And then I realized it wasn't the engines backfiring at all, it was twenty millimeter shells exploding outside both sides of the cockpit here. And then I realized Bert was a hell of a lot smarter than me; he knew what was going on. And there were guys behind us shooting at us- I hadn't seen them. I'd been fixed on the planes ahead. We call it "target fixation" and I was suffering from it. But when I saw those guys and we pulled in behind them, I never saw anything else. He did. And he said - they were popping around him and he said my airplane, you could see the red [inaudible] around it. And he thought I had it. Well, for a split second you know how that thing goes through you mind? Wow, I just bought the farm! That's about how long it is, a split second, and there's a­survival instinct takes over- that's all I can call it. And I slammed that stick as far as I could over to the left and I kicked the opposite rudder as hard as I could and did the worst snap roll I could think of and tried to be as uncoordinated - I just crossed the controls, just snapped that thing, and snapped off that toll into those clouds. I didn't know what was going to be at the bottom side, but it was going to be better than where we were! 80